I recently read a few outstanding articles that speak to this issue of 1) owning vs. challenging a brand’s monopoly, and the related issues of 2) embracing what is unique about a company 3) creating a unique and extremely useful shopping experience based off of a unique brand ; and I wanted to pass these along here:

Apple’s unchallenged monopoly
http://kensegall.com/blog/2011/11/ads-apples-unchallenged-monopoly/

Why Jeff Bezos is OK with Amazon being Amazon, and nobody else http://m.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/ff_bezos/all/1

What Ron Johnson learned from building the Apple Store Empire http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/what_i_learned_building_the_ap.html

I thought maybe a few of you might benefit from this list as well, so I’ve included the list below. And as always, if you have something to share, do please leave a comment and a link!

http://cargocollective.com/kreathaus/following
This is not all tablet interface design, and you do have to be careful what you choose to browse, but I have found the cargo collective network to be the best source for the latest and greatest stream of digital design work. Particularly the following two designers:

http://cargocollective.com/bcline

http://cargocollective.com/jonaseriksson

A few others:

http://www.landingpad.org/

http://beautifulpixels.com/

http://app.itize.us/wp/category/ipad

and my gimmebar findings:

https://gimmebar.com/user/jonathanbowden

After receiving the book from Amazon (that story here), I was first suprised by the shear size of the book. This things a monstor, by today’s literary work’s standards. Close to 3″ tall, and it’s not even large print. Isaacson has surely done his homework, not to leave any stone unturned. Which leads me to this post.

I am only a small bit into the book, but I am already enthralled, if you can’t tell, ha. So when I saw that PBS would be airing an hour documentary special on Steve’s live, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two works.

While somewhat informative on a very very high level, I was really suprised how much detail and backstory was left out, compared to the book. Granted, this is to be expected wthen comparing an hour long video production versus an exhaustive literary work, but I was still suprised by just how much was skimmed over.

So as I make my way throught this mountain of a book, I wanted to share my thoughts along the way, in smaller snippets here on my blog.

I will try and keep the post relatively short and to the point, starting with a quote or section from the book. And as always, I would love to see the discussion grow with your own observations.

I am only 23 pages into the work, but my mind is already racing with new insights and observations Walter Isaacson has dug up, to the benefit of us all.

Here’s to the crazy ones.

Recently I had the great opportunity to create a custom Youtube Channel for Dell. While there are some handy features in the Youtube admin tool to change out a handfull of properties (essentially CSS classes), I found it a bit time consuming creating a quickly editable PSD mockup.

I spent many hours taking and dissecting screenshots, then creating editable text in these screenshots place, and finally applying new colors to each element. As I expect to create more custom channels in the future, I came up with a system within my PSD to group each corresponding element into it’s respective property, or css like class. After creating this handful of smart objects, I could then just apply a color overlay to each, change out the background and a few images (logo, top banner, thumbnails), and quickly see new color and style options.

After investing this time, I thought “why not give this away and save other designers time as well”, so here it is!

I won’t go into great detail here about how to use the Youtube admin tool , as it’s pretty straightforward (but if you want to learn the basics, check out google’s primer on the subject here). Instead, I will show a screenshot of the admin tool, and then a screenshot of the layers pallete within my template, to show how they correspond.

The “Themes and Colors” section of the Youtube Admin Panel

View full size image

Here you see the handful of properties that you can change, including: Font, Background color, Wrapper color, Wrapper text color, Wrapper link color, Wrapper transparency, Background Image, Background color, Title text color, Link color, Body text color, and Transparency.

PSD Layer Pallete, including corresponding “class” related smart objects

View full size image

Download the Template PSD

Conclusion

I hope you find this template to be helpful and a great time saver. A few thanks: Bacon ipsum for the high quality filler text, Frank Restaraunt and Christian Helms for the swine inspiration, and Wood Type Revival for use of their fine “Concave Tuscan” headline font.

Here are a few of my early favorites, but i’d love to hear everyone else’s thoughts as well:

Social Media Cures Cancer and Speaks for Survivor
Speakers: Doug Ullman – CEO of Livestrong, and Julie Shussler – Burson-Marsteller

Agency 2.0: Introducing the Innovation Lab
Speakers: Jamie and Chris Monberg – Hornall Anderson

Design from the Gut: Dangerous or Differentiator?
Speakers: Phil Coffman – Springbox / Method & Craft, Naz Hamid – weightshift, Laurel Hechanova – Apocalypse OK, and tom watson – facebook

OMG Your RFP is Killing Me
Speakers: Joe Rinaldi – Happy Cog, and a panel of others

Humanize the Web: Illustrating for Interactive
Speakers: Gerren Lamson – GSDM, and Reagun Ray – Paravel

The Right Tool for the Job: Native or Mobile Web?
Speakers: Buzz Andersen – Tumblr, and a panel of others

TenseUp: Creating Positive Tensions In Experiences
Speaker: Matt Walsh – Crispin Porter + Bogusky

Building the Dell app, therapy for a brand.
Speakers: michael kriegshauser – Dell Global Site Design, and a panel of others

Navigating danger in marketing’s in-between times
Speakers: Allison McCarthy, Guthrie Dolin, and Larry Johnson – Odopod

A Brief History of the Complete Redesign of Google
Speakers: Jon Wiley, and a whole panel from Google

Is it better to bring it In-House?
Speakers: John Stevens and Tommy Lynn – Dell Global Creative

Shameless plug for my own panel:
3 creatives. 3 amazing projects. 18 minutes each.
I’ll moderate, and speakers / creatives To Be Determined! maybe you?!

So those are a few of my favorites. What about you?

As I’ve talked about a little bit here on the blog, I had a blast my first time at sxsw this spring, and I want it to be even better next year!

so here’s what I propose, whether your a veteran, a newbie, or have never been to sxsw, let’s band together the collective nerd / design power of the interwebs, and get transparent about what we want to see / present / build up / rip apart at sxsw 2012. let’s stop bemoaning how big / corporate / meh sxsw has become, and let’s blow it out.

and if the thought has ever crossed your mind, “maybe i should submit a panel about (insert whatever your passionate about)”, then yes, you should. we need more PASSION, and less web celebritieness.

with me? alright, let’s procede:

so here’s a few of my prelimenary ideas / topics i would like to either

a) present on / participate on a panel on

or

b) would love to see others present

1. being awesome. i know it sounds completely narcissistic, but hang with me… what if i just moderated a panel and invited four or five designers / creatives / activists / mad scientist / generally awesome people to come and discuss their craft, their lives, and how their using their influence for good.

2. digital dads. i know this isn’t very inclusive, but i’d love to moderate / hear a panel on the daily joys / struggles / opportunities that other dads have experienced.

3. working in house, and killing it. a panel from a handful from some of the world’s leading in house designers / creatives, from large corporations, to startups, to non-profits, and everything in between. @boda , @squaredeye , @keeg , and @soopa are a few possible participants that come to mind.

4. trimming the fat in my creative intake. a panel discussing the growing problem of information overload, particularly with other creatives, and how they balance keeping up with the creative world around them, without getting swamped in blogs / feeds / and general mashahoopla.

5. the remote creative office. this one is a bit more long term aspirations for me, as one day I hope to be able to work remotely as a part of a stellar creative team that is free from the restrictions of a traditional office space / commute. at sxsw 2011 i met a few creatives that are doing this now ( @pws just to name one), and it has inspired me to keep seeking out this possibility. I mean seriously, it’s 2011, and we’re still tied to location??

So these are just a few of the first ideas i have. You might have noticed all of these are panels. After originally proposing a solo presentation last year, and ending up doing a dual presentation, I would highly recommend a panel, or at minimum a dual presentation. Unless your Blake Mycoskie or Majora Carter.

I would love to hear your ideas, no matter how rough they are. Or do any of my ideas sound interesting, need to be tweaked, or should be scrapped, insert your thoughts here.

So don’t hold back, let’s create the future we want to see.

So I wanted to share a few reasons that weighed heavily on my consideration of this opportunity, and hopefully you might find them helpful on your own journey.

Dream no small dreams

In some ways, my career so far could not have gotten off to a better start. I had the honor of working at the top advertising shop in the world, at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, daily mixing it up with some of the brightest minds in the creative industry, and partnering with dream clients that were as generous with the creative reigns as Gordoughs is with the awesomeness. A dream job indeed.

And for the last few years, I was part of the scrappy digital agency, Springbox, learning from some very smart, business minded creative gurus. It was here at Springbox, that I’ve truly started to find that sweetspot, where creative innovation, business goals, and user’s need all meet. Not to mention we had dream clients like Livestrong and Sweet Leaf Tea, and a steady supply of Brooklyn lager in the fridge. Good times.

So when a handful of tempting opportunities came my way, it was my instinct to lean to the hippest, most cutting edge, and overall leaders of the creative / technology industries. All great options, but all in someway easy options. Proven track records, tons of recent success to leverage, and fan bases like the world has never seen before. All of them would have been dream jobs to some degree.

But great stories are never about the easy life, or the luxuries one affords himself (via Donald Miller’s ‘A thousand miles in a million years’). Great stories are always about overcoming great obstacles. The underdog, the one everyone had counted out, who then came back to prove all the naysayers wrong.

I want to live a great story. I want to tell my grandkids of when the chips were down, and we proved them all wrong.

So even as Dell currently has some things going for them (which I’ll get to shortly), I also know that as a brand, they have taken quite a hit with the public perception over the last 5-10 years. There is much work to do. And it will require much blood, sweat and tears, as all great adventures do. And that, has the potential for a great comeback story.

Though dell has seen some rough spots over the last decade, there are many reasons for hope, and I will highlight a few of them next.

Momentum

Over the last year, Dell has been going through a massive and far reaching re-branding, largely led by an in-house team. Far beyond merely a logo, a few colors, and a typeface, this effort is addressing the entire brand prescence. And with a corporation this massive, this has been no small task. I have seen this first hand over the last year, as part of the team at Springbox working in partnership. I will admit that I was a bit skeptical about the rebranding when I first began to see it implemented. Many of us have seen corporations undergo a “rebranding”, while the reality is merely a new coat of paint. Though I thought this may be the case at first, I’m now convinced that I was wrong. There is change happening, and Dell is moving in the right direction. There is a renewed identity and passion in who Dell is as a company, as a force for good. There is a new found focus on design, aesthetics, real world usefulness, user experience, and overall brand perception. There is a good bit of momentum, and with a corporation this large, this is no small feat.

Support from leadership

As I saw the momentum building over the last year, I knew that it had to be a huge team effort, but I also knew that it had to contain a key element often missing from the majority of design / branding / creative changes in corporations: they had the support from leadership. More than just a sign off, change is being driven from both the top down, as well as bottom up. This is huge. Unless the leadership values and desires to see change happen, a million psd files / sketches / and dreams will all go for not.

A stellar team is forming

As I began to tell some fellow creatives about my decision, one of the things that I kept hearing repeatedly was “oh wow, my really talented friend / former coworker just joined the team there”. Though I didn’t know this so much when I accepted the offer, it has been quite reassuring and exciting to hear time and time again. Designers, writers, technologist, interaction designers, producers, and more. The breadth and depth of experience is impressive. Along with having support from leadership, I also believe it’s crucial to have teammates who are both highly skilled and passionate about their craft. I’m excited to join this growing team.

50 years from now, I want to look back over my life and be thankful for the people and teams I had the honor to be a part of, remember the challenges I conquered, and have no regrets about how I invested my God given time, energy, and passion. Here’s to being one step closer.

While my wife spent a good amount of time being pampered at the St Julien Spa, I found a mountain bike and a few jaw dropping trails. While out riding, I had a few realizations that I think transcends beyond the trail, on to the broader adventure of life we all find ourselves in. I want to share just a few:

Be prepared for every upcoming inch, but keep your focus a good distance ahead

It had been a while since I’d ridden serious trails, and I kept committing a beginners mistake when i was first starting out. In both the climb and the ascent, I was focusing on every little rock and root directly in front of me. This helped me to navigate cleanly over the immediate obstacle, but my momentum was instantly killed after every obstacle of any significance. I had to keep telling my self to “look up 10 feet ahead, be aware of every twist, turn, and obstacle coming up, but ultimately focus on the bigger picture”. Once I did this, I was still prepared for each obstacle and possible pitfall, but I also gained a momentum and confidence, which in turn created a good sense of flow and adrenaline.

gadgets / tools / and gear will only get you so far, or even worse, they will become a crutch

on my first day of riding, I rented an insanely advanced dual suspension bike, practically the rolls royce / hummer h1 of mountain bikes. i won’t lie, it was a really sweet piece of machinery. the cushioning and handling were light years ahead of anything i have ever ridden. but on my second day of riding, I rode a friends old bike. a standard, specialized hard tail bike from yesteryears. a good bike for it’s time, but nowhere near the level of technology and gadgetness of the first day’s bike. but you know what? I had just as much fun the second day. maybe because i knew i had to push myself that much harder. I had to navigate even more precisely. and I knew the adventure I was having, was all the more on account of my hard work, and not some fancy machine.

if your not giving back some blood, sweat, or tears, your probably not pushing hard enough

Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way a lover of pain, desiring to inflict it upon myself in the name of being tough or macho. I actually hate crashing and avoid it at all cost in my daily bike commuting. But when I got out out on the trail, I didn’t want to play it safe. I didn’t want to come back with out a few scars, or a bit of blood shed. i only went over the handlebars a few times, and only took a few jumps off wobbly, but it was just enough. just enough to let me know i was still alive. Just enough to let me know where the edge is.

I’m going to keep it short, and let you draw your own parallel’s to daily life. Or better yet, go find a bike and a trail, and have a blast.

The title “client’s are not the target audience, user’s are”, might be a bit heady, so, simply put, we explored the challenge of getting clients to move past traditional promotional advertising (aptly nicknamed ‘interuption’ by the smart folks at @rga ), and instead partner with clients to create truly unique and engaging digital experiences centered around their brand’s unique value.

So to the highlights…

to introduce the topic, I told a quick story of how this topic came to be burning within me: Last fall, I was in a agency internal meeting, discussing a client project mid way through, when a certain client request caused a riff among the team. My creative partner and I listened to the request, but strongly objected, for both conceptual and functional reasons. Another member of my team strongly pushed back, and eventually gave the reasoning “we have to do it. we’re to make the client happy”. At this point, I pretty much flipped. Almost instantly, I responded with “we’re not here to make the client happy. We’re here to help the client make a great digital experience. They may not be instantly happy everytime.” I probably could have had more tact, but it is a strong passion of mine, and ultimately inspired me to lead this talk. Now on with the actual talk.

We framed the conversation around two key phases in each project: how to begin a project well, and then how to keep focus midway through a project (when everything is bogging down) and finish well. With each phase, anton and I both gave a case study example from our own experiences. I’ll frame this write up in the same way.

how to begin a project well

I spoke about my experience at Springbox (an interactive agency in Austin) in leading the design for the 2010 complete re-design of http://www.Livestrong.org , the non-profit division of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, aimed at helping “all whose lives are affected by cancer. It is an amazing orginization, with an feircely loyal and supportive following. I focused on knowing exactly who your target audience is. Our team did this by creating an extremely helpful set of fictional personas, based on factual research.

While we looked at the traditional factor / demographics of the audience, such as age, sex, nationality, language, education level, etc.; what i found extremely helpful were some additional factors. These included: how are these people affected by cancer (they have just been diagnosed, their mom has cancer, etc.)? What are they trying to accomplish by coming to the site? What is their digital technology savviness? How do they use technology in their daily lives? What is their experience with the Livestrong brand?

After looking through these evolved personas, I was able to reason that people came to livestrong.org for two primary reasons: To either get help (as they or someone close to them is in immediate need of help), or they have come to take action, such as to participate in a livestrong marathon, bake sale, or one of a number of great events. After discovering this key insight, the whole project shifted from ‘how do i create a visually stunning site?’, and but instead to ‘how do craft the whole digital experience through these two priorities, in both aesthetic and heirarchy’. this finding made all the difference in creating an extremely useful, and easily navigable site.

On the first topic, Anton shared his recent experience in creating the HTC Sense website , a really playful and well done site! I will be much more brief here, as I do not want to misquote him, but I will share some of the highlights. In regards to the HTC site, Anton spoke of how the client had some really amazing features, called HTC Sense, but didn’t quite know how best to communicate them in a conversational and non-techy tone. To communicate these features in a fun and truly interactive way, @F_i crafted a series of interactive cartoon shorts, in which the viewer actually plays with the phone on the site, and experiences the aha moment through interaction, rather than just a observational video. Really cool stuff.

how to keep focus midway through a project (when everything is bogging down) and finish well.

or how to push through the “crap, just get it out the door moment”. Originally I had wanted the talk to focus on just the beginning of a project, but Anton had so many great insights on the latter that we had to include it. Honestly, I personally learned a ton on this topic, and found it extremely helpful in the day to day of running a creative services shop.

Here are a few highlights that really stuck out to me, in regards to finishing well:

As creatives, we have to be the expert, that’s why a client comes to us. you have to earn a client’s trust, and while a good portfolio is a good foundation, the details in a relationship really really matter. Things like: always be on time. heck, always be earlier. Always giving your client an idea of the contents of a meeting. Nothing elaborate, but start every meeting with a 30 sec – 1 min overview of what will be shown, discussed, what is new, old, etc. Always be organized. Ultimately, these might come across as trivial matters, but if the client is comfortable with you and can trust that your leading them well, they will let you control the project.

Educate the client. I know there is some opposition to this in the industry, but I agree with Anton. Most good clients are not creatives, or that experienced with the intricacies of the digital space, and they want to learn something. That’s a great opportunity for us, the digital creative professional. So own it, be on top of it, know your craft, know your industry. It should be something your passionate about, so it shouldn’t be that difficult.

And I save the best nugget for last: what do you do when the client has a request that they will not back down from, and you disagree strongly with? The grim reality, we are ultimately not fine artist or rock stars. we are in the service industry. The good news / wisdom from
Anton: find out what one section / page / feature matters most to the client, and make this amazing in their eyes! Then, find the other overlooked areas that most people never care much about, and freaking blow them out! For example, the login, contact, or about us page. Essentially, find out where you can play wide open, and where do you have to please. This is a huge encouragement and challenge at the same time.

In closing, I was truly blown away by the turn out and lively conversation. A huge thanks to everyone that was there, and a huge thanks to Anton for making the journey down south to join us! If you were with us, or even if your just digesting all of this now, I would love to continue the conversation here, so don’t hold back your thoughts!

passion

You may be tempted to skip over this part. I mean really, who wants to talk about passion, right? we’re in a business, an industry, who’s really passionate about the 9-5 anyway. Wrong. Above any thing else, the driving force of passion came up again and again for me while at south by. Though I can easily be distracted by the latest and greatest shiny gadget / idea / startup, ( what self respecting nerd can’t ;} ), the people and conversations that i consider most memorable are ones centered on whatever it is someone’s passionate about.

I’ll get to the offical business of the festival soon, but I wanted to first highlight the passion I found outside of the convention center halls. Whether it be conversations over pints at the gingerman, or over tacos at la condesca, the greatest moments for me were not spent leaning back gazing at slides or the next twittbookspace idea, but rather leaning intently into conversations about fatherhood, adoption, architecture, clients, pricing, camping, cylcing, and a handful of other topics. If we need more of anything at sxsw next year, it’s not opinions, technology, or parties. we (including myself) need more passion for the projects that fill up our moments, days, and lives.

a festival

I read that there were over 19,000 paying attendees this year, the greatest number in sxsw history. I also read that there was somewhere close to 1000 panels. Though at times the shear number of attendees and panels felt overwhelming, I’m thrilled overall to see both my city and my industry grow.

I was fortunate enough to make some outstanding panels, but I also missed a few, as to be expected with so many options at every turn. A few of my favorite in particular, were @rga ‘s “congratulations your brand is about to become obsolete”, Blake ( founder and chief shoe giver at Tom’s shoes, @blakemycoskie ) Mycoskie’s keynote, and john ( @jkolko ) kolko and dennis ( @dennis_littky ) littky ‘s panel “will technology save education” . Different subject matter for each, but the same theme of passion in each. These people are smart, but more importantly they are extremely passionate!

Overall, some of the panels were extremely basic, or mundane, but I did find some real gems! Sometimes you just have to dig! As far as value, I would say the conference is valuable, but I can not see myself ever paying for a badge. If in the future my company is paying, or if I get the honor to speak again and have my badge comped, I would love to come back. But I just can’t honestly say that the festival is worth $500 admission. I would pay $100, and consider $200. But not $500, at least at sxsw current state. which leads me to a challenge of where the festival can go!

Also, I am writing a summary of my own panel, “clients are not the target audience, users are”, co-led by the extremely smart and talented Anton @repponen, an associate creative director from fantasy interactive in new York, New York, and will post this shortly here on the kreathaus blog.

A Challenge

One of great individuals that I met this year, Ted @Boda , recently tweeted

“The best way to complain is to make things.” -James Murphy

This is the best summary for my thoughts on the possible future of sxswi. Over the course of the festival, I heard far too many complaints on how lame this or that panel / keynote / talk was. It was almost the standard way to start a conversation. And though I won’t deny that many of the panels were hit or miss, we can’t stop there.

We have to craft the future we want to live in. do you want sxsw to be amazing next year? well, how are you going to make it happen then?

so let’s drop the cynicism, evaluate what we’re passionate about, what we’re spending our lives on, and how those two things can intertwine.

So here’s my challenge for next year: Determine what your passionate about. What keeps you up at night? What project / business / app / idea do you day dream about? What project will you have invested so much time / sweat / and blood into by march of next year, that by the time I see you, you can’t help but tell me about it?

And if a couple thousand of us gather again next year in this fair city, with a passion for whatever it is we’re spending out lives on, I think we will alI be blown away.

So get to it. And I can’t wait to run into you next year!

Until next year, what were your thoughts on sxsw this year? how can we make it better? I’d love to hear other takes on the subject!